Homeless Sweets Way homeless

Walk through Sweets Way housing estate in Barnet, North London, and it’s a ghost town – broken glass on the streets, windows boarded up as if in preparation for a storm, kitchen and bath items laying improbably in gardens and sidewalks: a bath tub here, a refrigerator there.

At the end of last year, 160 households called Sweets Way home. It was a vibrant mix of council tenants and private renters, a place where everyone actually knew their neighbours.

In January, the tight-knit community was torn apart, after Annington Homes, the largest private owner of homes in the country, began evicting tenants, making way for a massive redevelopment that will eventually see all current homes demolished and luxury, exorbitantly priced homes erected in their stead.

“It felt like being in a war zone”

Shireen had lived on Sweets Way for five years. Single mother of two young boys, aged 15 and 16, she had found the community she had been seeking as she started her life anew in one of the world’s largest cities.

 
“I’d been away for a few years abroad before I moved to go back to London,” Shireen said. “When I first left London, I was married, and I came back to London single. So in every way, I was starting my life from scratch.

 
“As someone who is not originally from Britain, as an immigrant, you build up your friends to become like your family. So it’s like I’ve been cut off from my family when the evictions started.”

 
Shireen was served with an eviction notice in February after which the Tory-led Barnet council began the process of rehoming her and her boys.

 
“Barnet council said that in my case, because of my children’s age, they would move us somewhere in the nearby area – but they did exactly the opposite.

 
“They had offered me a place in Grahame Park, which is very far away. When I went to view the flat, it was in a very bad situation – damp everywhere, broken windows, broken tiles.”

 
Shireen took her case to the council to appeal being rehoused in such substandard conditions, miles away from her sons’ school. She lost both appeals. The council – a local government body which is duty-bound to serve its residents – then discharged her from its duty to house her.

“It was a shock for me,” she said. “What can I be expected to do? I was going to be officially homeless. It was very stressful time for me and my boys.”

 
Shireen explained how little time evicted tenants had been given to vacate their homes.

“The day I left the flat, the bailiff at came at 9 am and told us we have to start taking our things out. They gave us seven days to move out. In that time I had to arrange for storage, I had to hire a van. When I came back to pick up my things, I left some things in the garden. It never occurred to me that someone might come and steal our things. When I came back to get these things, they were all gone.

 
“There were some pieces of furniture I had to leave – my son’s table, a dining room table, because they were too big to fit in the storage room. You see all this abandoned furniture, broken glass everywhere on the estate. It felt like being in a war zone.”
With the help of local housing campaign group Barnet Housing Action Group, Shireen was eventually offered a different home from the council, although still located in faraway Grahame Park.

 
“It’s really hard for the boys,” she explained. “All their friends go to one school, and now they’re away from all their friends. I myself feel incredibly isolated because I’m away from my friends and support network as well. Where I live now, I only know where my home is, where the bus stop is and the station – and that’s it. I still come by the Sweets Way area to do my shopping.”

 
Shireen spoke to UNITElive in a home near the estate currently being occupied by former tenants and housing campaigners fighting the evictions and eventual demolition of the Sweets Way homes.

 
The home has been turned into a social centre where members of the Sweets Way community, along with housing activists across the city, can gather in solidarity to give voice to their plight.

 
Occupation of the estate itself was ruthlessly ended on March 30, after a judge granted possession to Annington and imposed an injunction preventing people from entering the estate.

 
That’s when workers began coming in and disembowelling the homes, ripping out radiators, sinks and tubs to make the homes purposely unliveable, according to Shireen.

 
On Friday (April 10), the remaining families awaiting their individually scheduled eviction dates were served with a notice that their cases were transferred from county court to High Court bailiffs. The High Court bailiffs cannot be legally resisted and will turn up without notice any time this week, according to Sweets Way Resists website.

 
Stolen childhoods

 
In a city in which 22,000 homes remain empty – enough to house 55,000 people – council house waiting lists have skyrocketed.
Sweets Way is a microcosm of the housing crisis plaguing the entire city, with more and more London families being forced out to make room for profit-crazed private developers and landlords aiming to make a quick buck from the city’s property market.

 
Once Annington demolishes the homes, the planned development will have 288 units in total, with only 11 per cent earmarked to be “affordable” – a grim euphemism given that the definition of “affordable” can mean up to 80 per cent market rent.

 
Unite community coordinator Pilgrim Tucker noted that Unite is launching a housing campaign, Hands off London, to encompass all of London and the campaign groups on every estate fighting eviction notices and social cleansing.

 
“The social cleansing of our capital is scandalous and immoral,” she said. “These people are being forced away from their friends and family, their communities and their children’s schools. Some children have moved schools so many times. No one yet knows the psychological affect this has on them and their families.”

 
But Shireen and families like hers know full well just how damaging such disruptions to communities can be.

 
“This whole experience has stolen our children’s childhoods,” she said. Even the little ones now know what ‘homeless’ and ‘eviction’ means now. Children should be playing at this time, or studying, or just enjoying being young. What they’ve put us through – they’ve hurt our children the most.”

 
Shireen hasn’t yet given up hope, however. “We have to keep fighting,” she said. “We will keep fighting.”